American actor Humphrey Bogart and Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman on the set of Casablanca, directed by Michael Curtiz.
Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images“Casablanca,” the classic 1942 World War II film starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, is headed back to theaters for one night only this week, albeit, with a few changes.
Fathom Events and Warner Bros. have partnered to bring a new version of the Oscar-winning film, digitally remastered in 4K, to the big screen Wednesday. Warner Bros. digitally scanned fine-grain, nitrate film into 4K, the current industry standard for high-definition resolution. Those images were put through a digital restoration process to clean and repair the picture so it could be presented to audiences in ultra-high definition.
Images from Casablanca (1942).
Fathom Events / ContributedThe film will be shown Wednesday at 7 p.m. at participating theaters including some AMC, Regal and Cinemark locations. Tickets and locations are available online.
“Casablanca” is set in French-occupied Morocco during WWII. It’s a near lawless land where cash is king and refugees fleeing war-torn Europe wait for passage to American by way of Portugal in a race against increasing Nazi control.
Humphrey Bogart plays stoic American expatriate and proprietor of Rick’s Café American, Rick Blaine. Blaine forms an unlikely friendship with local police captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains) when, of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, an old flame (Ingrid Bergman) walks into his — with her husband. Bogart must decide whether to abscond with his old flame and escape Casablanca or remain, facing likely punishment at the hands of Nazis and watching his love leave with her new love, one of the Allied Forces greatest hopes.
Bogart and Rains each earned Academy Awards for their performances in the movie and the American Film Institute ranks it among the top 100 films of all time. Dialogue like “Here’s looking at you, kid,” “We’ll always have Paris and “This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship” have made it become one of the most referenced, quoted and misquoted films of all time.
Images from Casablanca (1942).
Fathom Events / ContributedThe famous line “Play it again, Sam,” is never spoken. But it is the title of a Woody Allen film about a Casablanca-obsessed film critic who sees an imagined version of Bogart’s character. And the classic “a penny for your thoughts” is actually “a franc (French currency) for your thoughts.”
In 2006, the Writers Guild of America dubbed “Casablanca” the greatest screenplay of all time.
Tickets for the limited engagement are available here.